By Mencken’s Ghost

February 5, 2014

It has been reported in the mindless media that 110 million people watched the Super Bowl, although it’s a certainty that far fewer people had the endurance to watch it from beginning to end. 

Thank goodness.  It would have been a major public health issue if 110 million people had watched the whole thing.

The weight of the average adult brain is three pounds.  Those who watched the entire Super Bowl now have a brain mass of about two pounds.

It’s a safe bet that at least half of the viewers were conservatives.  In fact, conservative demagogue and blabbermouth Sean Hannity was at the game.  He claimed on his radio-rant show that he got to the stadium four hours before the game.   Since his brain was way smaller than the average brain to begin with, it probably weighs about one pound now.

A football game lasts about three hours and has only about 15 minutes of action.  It would seem that in seven hours of sitting in the stadium, Hannity could have found a few minutes to do some deep thinking, as rare as that would be for him.  Even with his shrunken brain, he could have asked himself, Would a true conservative watch the Super Bowl?

No, he would not.

The reason is that professional football, like other professional sports, is a mix of socialism, redistribution, crony capitalism, and plutocracy.  A conservative of principle would no more be seen in a subsidized football stadium than he would in a Marxist coffeehouse.

Take the stadium that Hannity sat in to watch the game.  It was built with public money.  So was the first stadium on the site.  So was the entire Meadowlands complex, including a horse racing track.  The New Jersey public authority that financed the complex and other venues is now $800 million in debt.  (For sordid details, see the City Journal article, “Jersey’s Un-Super Bowl,” at www.city-journal.org.)

Conservatives are supposed to be against public debt.

As with many similar sports developments across our bankrupt nation, the Meadowlands was sold to a gullible public by means of the laughable notion that the “investment” would more than pay for itself by attracting private development to the area.   The Meadowlands remains a fetid swamp, literally and figuratively.

My hometown of metro Phoenix will host next year’s Super Bowl.  It will be played in the suburb of Glendale, in a stadium financed with public money.  The city is already asking the state for a bailout to cover the costs of hosting the game.  No doubt, most of the local leading conservative politicians and talk-radio personalities will be at the game and not be conflicted at all about being there.

One would need intelligence, introspection and principles to be conflicted.

It is understandable that the vast majority of conservatives send their kids to public schools and participate in Social Security and Medicare.  After all, they have little choice in the matter, can’t afford not to participate, and understand the futility of seriously reforming these systems.  But it is easy to not watch a socialized Super Bowl.  Not watching requires no money and no political organization. It just requires having the principles, courage and conviction to break from the conservative herd.  It requires the following answer when a friend asks if you’re going to watch the Super Bowl:  “No, I’m not going to watch it because I’m against socialism.”

Imagine Sean Hannity saying this.  Not only would he send a powerful message about conservatism, but he wouldn’t lose brain mass that he can ill-afford to lose.

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